Shindall stifled a gasp, clasping his hands together in excitement. “Word came from the priest that we should expect news of you soon. News that would shake the foundations of the Heretic Dominion. But I never thought, never dreamed I would see you myself, certainly not here in this hovel where I play innkeeper.”
Word came from the priest . . . “What did he tell you?” she enquired, keeping her tone light, only mildly curious. That I’d be dead soon? That you had a new martyr to worship?
“The priest’s messages are brief, and vague, for good reason. If the Fief Lord or the heretic King were to intercept them, too much clarity could undo us all.”
She nodded and returned to her meal. The pie was surprisingly good, steak marinated in ale and baked with mushrooms in a soft pastry.
“If I may,” Shindall went on. “Your mission, though I would never dare ask its object, is it complete? Do we finally draw near our deliverance?”
Reva gave a bland smile. “I need to find the High Keep. The priest told me you had charge of seeing pilgrims safely there.”
“Of course,” he breathed. “Of course you would want to undertake the pilgrimage, whilst time remains.” He rose and went to a corner of the room, the one least favoured by the lamplight, bending down to lift a brick from the base and extract something from the space behind.
“Drawn on silk,” he said, placing a rectangle of material in front of her, no more than six inches across. “Easy to hide, or swallow should you need to.”
It was a map, simply drawn but clear enough to follow, a line stretching from a cluster of icons she took to be the village, winding its way past mountain and river until it ended at a black symbol shaped like a spear-point.
“Six days’ travel from here,” Shindall told her. “Not so many pilgrims these days so the way should be clear. There are friends of ours there, playing the role of beggars in need of shelter.”
“It’s not garrisoned?” she asked in surprise. She had been considering various notions of how best to sneak into the keep under the nose of the Fief Lord’s guards.
“Not since the Trueblade fell. The drunken whore-chaser in Alltor seems happy to let it fall to ruin.”
Reva finished her meal, draining the rest of the ale. “I’ll need a room for tonight,” she said. “And a stable for my horse.” She offered him payment which he refused, leading her to a room on the upper floor. It was small and not especially clean but the sight of the narrow bed, the first she had seen since leaving the Darkblade’s house, dispelled any misgivings.
“I met him once,” Shindall said, lingering at the door, eyes still fixed on her face. “The Trueblade. It was not long after the Father had saved him from the outlaw’s arrow, the scar was still fresh, red like a ruby, bright in the morning air when he stood up to speak. And his words . . . so much truth to hear in the space of a few moments. I knew then I had heard the Father’s call in those words.” His gaze was intense and the thickness in his voice reminded her of the swordsmith in Varinshold when he said, “You have his eyes.”
Reva placed her cloak and sword on the bed. “Do the Realm Guard patrol the peaks?”
Shindall blinked, then shook his head. “The lowland roads only, most likely places for outlaws. Don’t get ’em in the mountains, too cold I expect.” He placed a lit candle on the room’s only table and went to the door. “Earliest bell’s at the fifth hour.”
“I’ll be gone by then. My thanks for your diligence.”
He gave her a final glance before leaving the room, swallowing before he said, “Seeing your face is the only thanks I’ll ever need.”
◆ ◆ ◆
She had never been to the Greypeaks before and found the sheerness of the mountains disconcerting, unassailable cliffs rising on all sides to ever-greater heights the deeper she went. The air held a perennial chill made worse by frequent drizzle or descending mist. The road ended at a broad, swift-running river tracking away towards the east. She began to follow it, the silk map having told her it provided the most direct route to the keep, the grey hunter snorting in protest as she guided him over the rock-strewn bank.
“Snorter,” she said, smoothing a hand along his neck. “That’s what I’ll call you.”
A clacking scatter of stone made her turn in the saddle, seeing another rider arriving at the road’s end. Reva sat and waited for him to catch up, a large boy on a small horse.
“Did you steal that?” she asked as Arken drew level.
“The brothers’ coin,” he said, coughing then fidgeting in his too-small saddle.
Reva sat in silence, watching him blush and cough some more.
“I stay with them one more day and I’ll kill him,” he said eventually. “And I owe you a debt.”
A faint rumble of thunder sounded overhead and Reva looked up to find a dark bank of cloud approaching from the west. “We’d best move back a ways from the river,” she said, kicking Snorter forward. “It’s like to flood when it rains.”
◆ ◆ ◆
“He was just a wheelwright,” Arken said. “Skilled and a little more learned and Faithful than most men in the town, but still just a wheelwright. Then one day the Aspect of the Second Order came to visit the mission house and father went to her for catechism. After that, everything changed.”
They had found shelter from the rain in a narrow crack in a cliff face. It kept the worst of the deluge off but was still too damp for a fire, obliging them to huddle in their cloaks, warmed only by the breath of the horses.
“Every spare hour spent speaking to any who would listen,” Arken went on. “Every spare coin gone to pay the blocker to print his tracts, handed out for free to any who’d take them, me and my sister standing in the street hour after hour whilst he droned on. The worst thing was some people actually stopped to listen. I hated them for that. If no-one had listened, he might have given it up, and the Fourth Order might have left us alone. Your god has no Orders, does he?”
“This world was made by the will of one Father,” she said. “So we might know his love. One world, one Father, one church.” Venal and corrupt though it is.
Arken nodded then sneezed, a bead of water lingering on the tip of his nose.
“Will they look for you?” Reva asked.
His face became downcast. “I doubt it. Words were said.”
“Words are not arrows, they can be taken back.”
“He ordered us to do nothing!” Arken’s jaw clenched, his fists balled beneath his cloak. “Just sat there when they came riding out of the woods, whispering his catechisms. What kind of man does that?”
A faithful man, she thought. “What did he have to say that angered them so much?”
“That the Faith had lost its way. That we were guilty of a great error, that the Red Hand had twisted our souls, made us hate when we should have loved. Made us kill where we should have saved. That the persecution of the unfaithful had raised a wall between our souls and the Departed. One day a brother from the Fourth came to the house with a letter from his Aspect. It was polite but firm: stop speaking. Father ripped it up in his face. Two days later the shop burned down.”
Snorter began stomping the rock with his fore-hoof, head jerking in impatience. She was starting to understand his moods, and inactivity was not something he appreciated. She got up, taking a carrot from the saddlebag and holding it to his mouth as he chomped. “You don’t owe me any debt,” she told Arken. “And travelling with me could prove . . . dangerous.”
“You’re wrong,” he said. “About the debt. And I don’t care about any danger.”
His gaze was full of earnest intent, and something more, which was a shame. Still just a boy, she thought. Despite all his troubles. “I’m looking for something,” she told him. “Help me find it and the debt between us is settled. After that, you go your way.”
He nodded, smiling a little. “As you wish
.”
She took something from the saddlebag and tossed it to him. “Your father forgot to check the Ranter for weapons.”
He turned the knife over in his hands, pulling the blade free of the scabbard. It was a long-bladed weapon of good steel, well balanced, the ebony hilt cross-etched for a strong grip. “I don’t know how to use it. Father wouldn’t even let me have a wooden sword when I was younger.”
She peered out at the rain, seeing it was starting to dwindle into a light drizzle, and took hold of Snorter’s reins to lead him from the crack. “I’ll teach you.”
◆ ◆ ◆
It was like playing with a child, a child half a foot taller and twice the bulk of her, but a child nonetheless. He’s so slow, she wondered as Arken stumbled past, his sheathed knife missing by an arm’s length as she dodged away. She leapt onto his back and put her own knife to his throat. “Try again,” she said, jumping clear.
She saw a slight flush on his face as he turned towards her, a flustered hesitancy in the way he hefted his knife. It’s not shame, she realised. I’ll have to stop jumping on him.
For the next four days she spent an hour at night and another in the morning attempting to teach him the basics of the knife, finding it a mostly hopeless task. He was big and strong but had none of the speed or agility required to match even her weakest efforts. In the end she told him to put the knife away and concentrated on unarmed combat. He did better at this, mastering the simpler combinations of kick and punch with relative ease, even landing a stinging blow on her arm as they engaged in some light sparring.
“I’m sorry,” he gasped as she rubbed at the bruise.
“For what? My fault for being too”—she ducked under his guard, delivered a hard open-handed smack to his cheek and twisted away before he could react—“slow. That’s enough for tonight. Let’s eat.”
She was aware allowing him to stay was another indulgence, meeting a need for human company unfulfilled since her escape from Al Sorna. Also, he had taken on the role of menial without complaint, making the fire, seeing to the horses and cooking the meals every night with an almost martial efficiency. This is unfair, she thought, watching him cut strips of bacon onto the skillet. I don’t need his help. And the way he looks at me . . . It wasn’t lustful exactly, or leering in any way. More a kind of longing. Still just a boy.
The High Keep came into view the next day, a jagged spike in the distance. From the tales she had heard of the place she had expected something grander, taller, a fabled castle fit for her father’s martyrdom, but its lack of glamour became more obvious the closer they came. There were large holes in the walls and jagged gaps in the battlements, as if some giant had come along and taken a few bites out of the stonework. The road on the earthen ramp leading up to the gates was marked by patches of broken stone and home to a herd of long-horned mountain goats, feeding on the weeds sprouting from the paving and paying them scant heed as they passed.
“It’s amazing!” Arken enthused as they stood before the gate, looking up at the walls rising above. “Never knew a tower could rise so high.”
A squeal of metal called their attention to a door set into the gate, seeing an aged face peering out from the shadowed interior. “Got nothing here worth stealing,” it said.
Reva made the sign of the Trueblade and the hostility faded from the face. “Best come in,” it said then disappeared back into the gloom.
The old man stood back as she entered. Reva found it impossible to guess his age, anywhere past his seventieth year was her best estimate from the sagging wrinkles dominating his features. He wore mean clothing which she doubted had seen a wash-stone for some months, his torso wrapped in a threadbare blanket. He carried a head-high staff, more, she suspected, for support than armament from the way he leaned on it. “Vantil,” he introduced himself. “And I think I know who you are.” He nodded at Arken, left standing outside with the horses. “Him I don’t.”
“He has my trust,” Reva said.
That seemed to be enough for Vantil as he began hobbling towards a steep flight of stone steps. “’Spect you want to see the chamber first.”
“Yes.” Reva found her heart was beating harder than it had when she faced Ranter and his brothers. “Yes I would like that.”
It was just a room. Larger than the others they passed on the way, and in a similar state of disrepair, but still just a room, chill stone and shadow, empty save for a high-backed chair facing the door. At her request Vantil provided a torch and she began to scour the shadows, playing the flame over the walls, behind the pillars, beneath the chair.
“Don’t you want to pray before the chair?” Vantil asked, clearly puzzled by her behaviour.
Reva ignored the question, completing her first search of the room and immediately starting another, then another. Every corner of the chamber examined, every possible hiding place prodded, every shadow banished with the torch. Nothing.
“How long have you been here?” she asked Vantil.
“Came not long after the Trueblade fell.”
“You must know what I seek here.”
The old man shrugged. “To offer prayers for the Trueblade. To speak to the Father in the place of his holy martyrd—”
“He had a sword. Here in this room when he died. Where is it?”
Vantil could only shake his head in bafflement. “No sword here, and I know this keep better than any living soul. Everything got taken, if not by the Darkblade’s cutthroats then by the Fief Lord’s House Guards.”
“The Darkblade didn’t take it,” she muttered. “When did the Fief Lord’s men come?”
“They come every year, make sure the place is empty of pilgrims. We hide in the mountains until they’re gone. The last visit was two months ago.”
So many miles for nothing. It wasn’t here, Al Sorna’s men didn’t take it which left the Fief Lord, in Alltor.
“Do you have somewhere I can rest for tonight?” she asked Vantil.
“The blood of the Trueblade is welcome here for as long as she likes.” He fidgeted for a moment, his staff beating on the stones a few times. “The, ah, prayers?” he asked.
Reva gave the chamber a final glance. An empty chair in an empty room. No sign of the Trueblade, not even a bloodstained stone to mark his passing. Did he ever think of me? she wondered. Did he even know I lived?
“The Father knows well the depth of my love for the Trueblade,” she told Vantil, moving to the door. “I’ll need a bed for the boy as well.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Frentis
He found a hiding place in the hills several miles from the villa, a cluster of rocks atop a rise affording a clear view of the surrounding scrub desert, with sufficient brushwood for fuel and a rudimentary shelter. He set the stallion loose, whipping it towards the south in the hope it would lead any pursuers away. She continued to bleed that first night, thick streams of red flowing from her nose, ears and eyes, the dampness on her trews indicating she bled from everywhere she could. He stripped her and continued to wipe the blood away until, slowly, the flow began to ebb. She lay pale, naked and senseless, her breathing shallow, no fluttered eyes or groans to signal she might be dreaming. It occurred to Frentis that she might never wake, and if so, he could well be sitting here watching over her corpse for the rest of his life. The binding was as strong as ever, the itch vanished. He was hers again, even though she was defenceless, even though he wanted to sink his knife into her chest over and over. Instead he nursed her, kept her warm and sheltered against the night’s chill, until her eyes snapped open on the morning of the third day.
She smiled when she saw him, gratitude shining in her eyes. “I knew you couldn’t abandon me, my love.”
Frentis stared back, hoping she saw the hatred in his gaze, and said nothing.
She pushed aside the cloak he had used to cover her, stretching and flexing her limbs. She was t
hinner, but still lithe and strong . . . and beautiful. It made him hate her even more.
“Oh don’t sulk,” she said with a groan. “They were a necessity. For us as well as the Ally. You’ll understand in time.”
She grimaced at the sight of her blood-soiled clothing but pulled on the black cotton shirt and trews without hesitation. “Do we have food?”
He pointed to the only game he had been able to catch, a rock snake, caught, skinned and filleted the day before. He hung the strips of meat over a low-burning fire to smoke, finding it surprisingly tasty fare.
The woman fed on the remaining snake with evident gusto, grunting in pleasure as she chewed and swallowed. “A man of unending talents indeed,” she said when finished, grease shining on her lips. “What a fine husband you’ll make.”
They struck out in a north-easterly direction before the sun grew too hot to permit travel. A shallow rain pool nestling in a shaded crevice amidst the rocks provided a decent supply of water, though the going was hard due to the meagre sustenance of the last few days. A day and a half of slogging through the scrub brought them in sight of the coast, the woman judging them a good twenty miles north of Alpira.
“The port of Janellis lies another half-day north,” she said. “We’ll need to do some stealing, now that we’re just beggars in rags.”
◆ ◆ ◆
Frentis hadn’t stolen anything of true value since his days as a pickpocket on the streets of Varinshold, the thievery he had been encouraged to indulge in during his time at the Order House had been much less lucrative in monetary terms. It transpired his childhood skills hadn’t deserted him, a few hours wandering the streets of Janellis netted two full purses and a decent collection of jewellery, sufficient for new clothes and a room at a suitably unremarkable inn. They were husband and wife again, newly wed and in the flush of marital bliss, seeking a ship to the northern ports to visit relatives. The innkeeper recommended a merchantman due to depart for Marbellis the next morning.